Climate change no longer scary in Europe ... Dr. Hans Labohm

Climate change no longer scary in Europe
It’s not the climate, but the tide of opinion that’s changing in Europe and around the globe
Dr. Hans Labohm

The upcoming climate change (and wealth redistribution) summit in Cancun – coupled with Bjorn Lomborg’s ongoing publicity campaign for his new film – makes one thing painfully obvious. The fight against the delusion of dangerous man-made global warming remains an uphill struggle.

For decades the climate debate has been obfuscated by cherry-picking, spin-doctoring and scare-mongering by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists, including the environmental movement and mainstream media. Their massive effort to overstate the threat of man-made warming has left its imprint on public opinion.

But the tide seems to be turning. The Climate Conference fiasco in Copenhagen, Climategate scandal and stabilization of worldwide temperatures since 1995 have given rise to growing doubts about the putative threat of “dangerous global warming” or “global climate disruption.” Indeed, even Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and one of the main players in Climategate, now acknowledges that there has been no measurable warming since 1995, despite steadily rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.

People are paying attention, and opinion polls in many countries show a dramatic fall in the ranking of climate change among people’s major concerns. They are also beginning to understand that major rain and snow storms, hurricanes and other weather extremes are caused by solar-driven changes in global jet streams and warm-cold fronts, not by CO2, and that claims about recent years being the “warmest ever” are based on false or falsified temperature data.

In various parts of the world, the climate debate displays different features. The US and other parts of the non-European Anglo-Saxon world feature highly polarized and politicized debates along the left/right divide. In Europe, all major political parties are still toeing the “official” IPCC line. In both arenas, with a few notable exceptions, skeptical views – even from well-known scientists with impeccable credentials – tend to be ignored and/or actively suppressed by governments, academia and the media.

However, skepticism about manmade climate disasters is gradually gaining ground nevertheless.

In my own country, The Netherlands, for instance, it has even received some official recognition, thus dissolving the information monopoly of climate alarmists. The Standing Committee on Environment of the Lower House even organized a one-day hearing, where both climate chaos adherents and disaster skeptics could freely discuss their different views before key parliamentarians who decide climate policy.

This hearing was followed by a special seminar organized by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, using the same format but focusing on scientific topics. The Academy will soon publish a report about this seminar.

Europe often brags about its emission trading scheme (ETS), regarding itself as the vanguard of an international climate policy. In the European view, the Copenhagen climate summit should have produced a worldwide extension and sharpening of its ETS. But the vast majority of countries in the world refused to follow Europe’s example, so the meeting turned into a fiasco. Its follow-up in Cancun at year’s end will surely produce a similar result. And for good reason.

Contrary to official claims, Europe’s experience with ETS is dismally bad. The system is expensive and prone to massive fraud. More importantly, it serves no useful purpose.

The European Environmental Agency tracks Europe's performance regarding the reduction of CO2 emissions. Its latest report states: “The European Union's greenhouse gas inventory report … shows that emissions have not only continued their downward trend in 2008, but have also picked up pace. The EU-27’s emissions stood 11.3% below their 1990 levels, while EU-15 achieved a reduction of 6.9% compared to Kyoto base-year levels.”

On the face of it, the scheme seems to be pretty successful. However, much of the downward trend was due to the global economic recession, not to the ETS. Moreover, both climate chaos proponents and climate disaster skeptics agree that the scheme will have no detectable impact whatsoever on worldwide temperatures – perhaps 0.1 degrees – though this crucial piece of information has been carefully and deliberately shielded from the public eye.

What about renewable energy as an alternative? Consider these EU costs for various sources of electricity in cents per kilowatt-hour: nuclear 4, coal 4, natural gas 5, onshore wind 13, biomass 16 … solar 56!

Obviously, the price tag for renewables is extremely high, compared to hydrocarbons. The additional costs can be justified either by imminent fossil fuel scarcity (the “oil peak”), which would send petroleum and coal prices through the roof, or by the threat of man-made global warming. But on closer inspection neither argument is tenable.

The authoritative International Energy Agency does not foresee any substantial scarcity of oil and gas in the near to medium future, and coal reserves remain sufficient for centuries to come. As to global warming, the absence of a statistically significant increase in average worldwide temperatures since 1995 obliterates that assertion.

Meanwhile, recent peer-reviewed studies indicate that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere (natural or man-made) have minimal effects on climate change – while others demonstrate that, on balance, this plant-fertilizing gas is beneficial, rather than harmful, for mankind and the biosphere.

All this argues for a closer look at the cost/benefit relationship of investing in renewable energy projects, to prevent a massive waste of financial and natural resources on unreliable and thus uncompetitive forms of energy. Since every cloud has a silver lining, the ongoing economic crisis might give extra impetus toward that end.
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Hans Labohm is a former professor at the Dutch Institute of International Relations and guest teacher at the Netherlands Institute for Defense Studies. He has been an IPCC reviewer and has written extensively on global warming, petroleum economics and other topics.

Street Theater “Education” ... Paul Driessen

Street theater “education”
The climate and renewable energy con is losing its luster – prompting anguish and desperation
Paul Driessen

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It’s been a rough few weeks for the “eco-progressive” fringe.

Static jet streams induced near-record high temperatures in parts of the United States and Russia, but extreme cold pummeled Seattle, England and much of the Southern Hemisphere. Perhaps Al Gore, Michael Mann and Rajendra Pachauri can turn this hodgepodge into “catastrophic climate change,” but most folks understand it as Mother Nature and weather.

Polls and news accounts find more Americans, Europeans and other people becoming weary and skeptical of “manmade global warming disaster” claims, convinced that natural forces are the primary cause of recurrent climate change, and unwilling to accept soaring energy prices and reduced living standards in the name of stabilizing Earth’s unpredictable climate.

Few Americans place any value on EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s meaningless statement – that “climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it” – to justify the draconian regimes the agency is trying to impose. The issue is whether our emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic climate change, and there is no credible evidence of that.

The House-passed energy and climate bill remains moribund in the Senate. EPA is trying to regulate carbon dioxide in the absence of congressional action – based on its assertion that automotive, power plant and factory CO2 emissions “endanger human health and welfare.” However, Texas refuses to knuckle under, other states may likewise balk, and the next Congress could overturn the “endangerment” finding and bar EPA from rewriting the Clean Air Act and implementing its job-killing rules.

“Avatar” director James Cameron double-dared global warming disaster skeptics to debate him – then morphed into a chicken and cackled off when they accepted his increasingly ludicrous debate terms, calling his critics “swine” as he headed for the hills.

Having read too many Gore, Pachauri, Quinn and other Deep Ecology treatises, LunaBomber James Lee held Discovery Channel employees hostage and denounced the TV station for its support of “parasitic human infants,” before being shot by police. His website and actions underscore how demented some Earth Liberation and global warming fanatics have become.

As their economies have deteriorated, Germany, Italy, Spain and other countries have pulled the plug on unsustainable wind and solar subsidies, eliminating thousands of “green” jobs and putting hundreds of “clean energy” companies on the verge of bankruptcy.

Glen Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall drew 300,000 people. Meanwhile, “CarnivOil” events in Wisconsin drew more yawns than people, as desperate Big Environment groups struggled to regain their momentum, by ranting about global warming, the Gulf oil spill, and “evil” oil companies.

Americans increasingly understand that even sending US carbon dioxide emissions back to 1870 levels, as congressional climate bills would do, will not reduce global atmospheric CO2 levels, because emissions from China, India and other nations will rapidly offset our painful reductions. Those countries have made it clear that they will not sacrifice improved living standards for assertions that we can stabilize global temperatures by keeping atmospheric CO2 levels below 0.035-0.045% (350-450 ppm).

As China’s former representative for climate negotiations recently said: “Developing nations … are not willing to combat climate change if the price is continued poverty.” The Chinese government has made “no concessions on the country’s right to develop.” Many problems can be solved only through development. “There are 600 million people in India without electricity. The country has to develop and meet that need. And if that increases emissions, I say, So what? The people have a right to a better life.”

Harvard University investigated and sanctioned Professor Marc Hauser for grossly exaggerating his primate research results. Yet, his actions pale by comparison to what Phil Jones, Michael Mann and other Climategate researchers engaged in. Hauser’s grants were a drop in the bucket compared to the climate cabal’s. And he was not advocating massive, expensive, punitive changes in our lives, liberties, and energy and economic systems. Will other institutions match Harvard’s demand for integrity?

The independent InterAcademy Council investigated the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and issued a tough report that may help bring some integrity, transparency, accountability and sanity to what thus far has been mostly politics and activism masquerading as science. The IPCC, says the IAC, needs to replace data manipulation, suppression and bias with honest science; end conflicts of interest; incorporate contrary data and opinions; and back up headline-grabbing disaster claims with actual evidence (not just computer models or World Wildlife Fund press releases).

In other words, it must stop trying to prove manmade carbon dioxide is the sole or primary factor in climate change – and seek evidence-based answers to what drives climate change, what we might expect in the future, and how humans can better adapt to warmer, colder, wetter or drier futures.

The IAC and Hauser precedents should serve as a warning to climate colluders and manipulators. They are also increasing pressure on IPCC Chairman Pachauri to abdicate his throne, and be replaced by a respected climate expert who can bring a degree of integrity to this politicized organization.

HOWEVER, a belligerent Pachauri has told the Times of India he has “shed any inhibitions or feelings of cowardice. I believe this is now my opportunity to go out and do what I think is right. In the second term I may be a little more uncomfortable for people than I was in the first.”

Senator Harry Reid says he may still try to pass even a minimalist renewable energy bill in the Senate, and then use it to ram through an economy-disrupting climate bill during a lame duck session, if even by a single vote. That would make the United States the only country to enact draconian climate and energy rules in the midst of a recession – sending millions of jobs overseas, where energy prices and regulatory regimes are more hospitable and governments believe people have a right to better lives.

Aided by George Soros, leftist foundations and our own tax dollars (via EPA and other government agencies), radical greens are spending millions to lobby Congress. The Washington Post is giving free media to what it calls “some of the country’s most respected environmental groups” – helping them spin absurd street theater like CarnivOil into “educational” programs about saving Planet Earth (with vile oil executives bribing boxing referees and knocking out crab-costumed activists).

Teamster, teacher, auto and service employee unions are paying their own employees minimal wages and benefits, and sacking them for trying to unionize, columnist Deroy Murdock chronicles – while preparing to pump $50 million and legions of campaigners into ruling class Democrat reelection campaigns.

Meanwhile, Congress and EPA are pouring tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiatives, to help RGGI director Jonathan Schrag persuade states to implement increasingly restrictive fossil fuel, emission and renewable energy mandates, regardless of what Congress does – and pay for his new $2.2-million loft in Manhattan.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Today, on energy security issues, we unfortunately have less to worry about from external enemies, than from our own elitist politicians, bureaucrats and pressure groups.

In this critical election season, let us hope enough voters step up to defend our liberties, jobs, civil rights and children’s future.

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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

No Science, Fake Science, and the Deliberate Destruction of the Nation ... Alan Caruba

No Science, Fake Science, and the Deliberate Destruction of the Nation

By Alan Caruba

Any scientist who has not sold his soul to the environmental movement will tell you that the reason that greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), do not cause any warming is due to the fact that they have to conform to the laws of thermodynamics. The first law states that “energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only change form.” Energy produced by coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear is energy that has changed from one form of matter to another.

The attack on these sources of energy is a direct attack on the economic success of America and it is one that is at a dangerous peak of activity generated by the Obama administration, primarily through the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is simply no such thing as “dirty energy.” The push for so-called clean or renewable energy is a fiction to advance the use of the two worst, most unpredictable and unreliable forms of energy, solar and wind. They exist solely because of government subsidies and mandates. They produce little over three percent of the energy used nationwide every day.

The September 12 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek addressed this in an article, “Lisa Jackson’s High-Wire Act on Carbon Controls.” What the article did not say was that, if the EPA gains the authority to control carbon dioxide, it will literally control all business and industrial activity in the nation as well as the lives of all Americans. What the article did not say is that there is no scientific justification for controlling CO2 because it plays no role in the so-called “climate change”, the new language being used to avoid saying “global warming.” It should be evident to a kindergartner that humans not only do not affect the climate, but have no control over it.

The environmental movement that has devoted decades and millions to perpetrate the greatest science fraud in the history of mankind has backed away from “global warming” for the obvious reason that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the past decade, the result of a reduction in solar activity, a dormant period that has a long history of preceding periods of cooling.

One of President Obama’s goals has been to secure legislation, known as “Cap-and-Trade” that would authorize a scheme by which “carbon credits” would be bought and sold by utilities and industry for the right to produce and use energy. It is part of the global warming fraud and its sole purpose is political power while enriching a few insiders betting on the expansion of alternative energy sources.

As the Business Week article noted, the EPA has been attempting to exert authority over CO2, but has been doing so "cautiously" to avoid evoking a public outcry against it. Thus, Lisa Jackson has offered a “tailored” approach “that exempts mom-and-pop dry cleaners and pizza parlors and initially regulates only power plants and oil refineries.” The effect on oil refineries would drive up the cost of gasoline and every other oil derivative. Under the Clean Air Act, however, the EPA does not have this authority as CO2 is exempt from such action. Moreover, as noted, there is zero need to control CO2 as a threat to the environment because, without it, all life on Earth would not exist. It is CO2 that is the vegetative equivalent of oxygen that maintains all animal life. The two are symbiotic and have been for billions of years.

Americans and people worldwide have been deluged with fake science based entirely on computer models whose results have been deliberately skewed to produce results that affirm CO2 as a primarily factor affecting the Earth’s climate. It is not. As Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser has noted in his book, “Convenient Myths”, and in articles on the subject, “The atmosphere contains currently a bit less than 0.04% CO2. The rest is mainly oxygen (20%) and nitrogen (79%).” This represents an increase since the Industrial Age when the amount was an infinitesible 0.03%.

If all the CO2 produced by power plants and the use of coal, oil, and natural gas was reduced to levels the EPA and environmental groups deem “safe” it would have zero affect on the atmosphere.

As Dr. Klaus noted, “Nearly all life on earth depends on the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. Without any CO2, the Earth would be a barren place like the moon, or our neighboring planets, Venus and Mars.”

The EPA is lying to Americans using fake science. On July 29, 2010 it refused to “reconsider its greenhouse gas endangerment finding.” It avoided citing any of the scientists in its employ, instead it quoted the chief scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization that is entirely devoted to the global warming fraud. That so-called scientist, Dr. Steven Hamburg, said “The science behind EPA’s finding is strong. Now America needs to forge clean energy solutions that reduce the vast pollution discharged into our air.”

That is a lie. Indeed, more CO2 in the atmosphere would be extremely beneficial, aiding larger crop yields to feed Americans and others worldwide. It would improve the health and vitality of the planet’s forests. Ads on television touting “carbon sequestration” are part of the lie.To sum up, Cap-and-Trade and any control of CO2 is in its simplest terms, a vehicle to destroy the nation’s economy. You won’t read that in the BusinessWeek article, but it is a truth that cannot be denied and it is a battle for the future of the nation that must be won against this administration, against the EPA, and against the environmental organizations that have devoted themselves to this purpose.

Alan Caruba

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

From “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” to “Global Climate Disruption”

From “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” to “Global Climate Disruption”
AKA: “Throwing Everything At The Wall To See What Sticks”

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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One of the things at which the liberal-socialists are really bad is “re-educating the public.”

See, they actually believe that you and I are knuckle-dragging, saliva dripping idiots. They actually believe that something, (Not GOD!) put them on this earth to save our sorry behinds from ourselves. No, I’m not kidding. I am convinced they B E L I E V E!

Come on, folks, how else can one explain the completely stupid things they come up with. I mean, only a person so stuck on themselves they can’t see past the end of their nose would ever, in this world or the next, continue to try to sell a hoax to a public that already sees through the scheme and understands the reason behind their liberal-socialist con game is their determination to implement GLOBAL GOVERNANCE or, as we used to refer to it, a One-World Government.

They thought that had us peons sold on Global Warming. Actually, they never did. Only the suck-ups to the liberal-socialists and their agenda ever supported the global warming hoax in public. Well, big business did, as well, but that was to cover their rear ends with the government and not because they actually believed it.

The Greenies were dumb-founded when they learned that we knuckle-draggers had just enough light left in our bulb to use the internet to determine that the polar bear population was on the increase and was no where near declining -- not to mention our discovery that that cute, fuzzy, stuffed-toy look disguises a GRIZZLY BEAR IN A WHITE COAT!!! Hey, those polar bears are MEAN SUCKERS! To them, you and I are LUNCH!

And so, the socialist greenies realized long after everyone else out here in the boonies did, that the term “global warming” was a laugh line – a joke -- a bad joke, at that! So, in their infinite wisdom, they decided it was time for a NEW term. They came up with an all-encompassing term: “Climate Change.”

Again, we dummies out here in the hinterlands were, as usual, one or two steps ahead of them. We understood that the new term ‘Climate Change,” a less that “bright” move on their part, was intended to ENLARGE the “threat” to simply overwhelm us and we’d finally shut up and slink away with our collective tails between our legs.

Didn’t happen that way. Nope. It simply did not happen, as the elite leftist intellectuals just KNEW it would.

So, for the past few years they have been searching in the “round about” for another term to apply to the worldwide hoax originally known as “Global Warming.” Last week they rolled out the shiny new piece of propaganda. Now the term is: (Are you ready for this?) “Global Climate Disruption.” (SOURCE) Yep! That’s it! Just sorta rolls of the tongue -- doesn’t it? … OR NOT!

Now they have gone from bad to worse to just plain pathetic.

The thing that puzzles me is the apparent oblivion in which those people live. They apparently have no idea that we “poor souls” outside their academic enclaves and liberal-socialist compounds can see through them as thought they were one-way mirrors. We see them – but they don’t see us. They cannot comprehend that we, long ago, developed the skill to predict what they and their leftist brain trusts were going to do long, long, before that actually tried it.

They take themselves so seriously they cannot grasp reality. The reality of the green movement is – it is a belly grabbing, roll on the floor, laugh out loud, tear-inducing J O K E! They should be red-faced with shame, but they are not -- simply because they are so busy trying to impress each other with their “smarts” they are oblivious to the public’s disdain for their asinine edicts concerning the destruction of the earth by a gas we humans breathe out every single time we take a breath!

They are propagandist of the most incompetent kind. There was a time when we referred to them as fear mongers. But that was back before political correctness became the norm.

Even though we laugh at their silly antics it is imperative to understand that they have a single goal in mind. That goal is to finally establish a single worldwide socialist, Marxist, communist government.

The Obama Regime is jam packed with these people. Many of them are educated beyond their ability and unable to exist outside of the government or off a university campus. They are, in fact, quite pitiful and quite worthy of our pity. They seem totally unaware that their world is about to be shattered when the roof falls in on them under the weight of the American people’s anger.

We are tired of being played for fools and we are about to make our anger known at the polls in November.

J. D. Longstreet